Assessing Impact of Media

Growth in Foundation Support for Media in the United States

November 13 2013

Media Impact Funders is pleased to share a benchmark new report, Growth in Foundation Support for Media in the United States, in collaboration with the Foundation Center and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The research offers a far-reaching exploration of philanthropy’s role in media funding between 2009-2011, and is part of a new taxonomy project to better track and understand trends in media-related funding nationally.

As an organization working at the nexus of media and philanthropy it’s been especially gratifying to dive deep into the data, and to concretely see that this is a field that is no longer at the margins of giving, but is in fact growing at nearly four times the rate of domestic giving in other issue areas. $1.86 billion was invested in media projects between 2009-2011, and the trend lines are promising.

In addition to this research report, the Foundation Center has created a terrific new data visualization tool for researching media funding, as well as an Issue Lab that captures the latest research in the field. Both tools are available on our new website. We look forward to hearing feedback from colleagues about the report, the research tools and our site.

Finally, a word of thanks to our colleagues at the Foundation Center for their tremendous work on this effort, and to the John S. and James L. Knight and Wyncote Foundations for their support. The whole project was produced in collaboration with GuideStar and the Ford Foundation.